For The Good Of All, Do Not Destroy The Birds

I took the day off of work on Wednesday. My dad and I went to downtown Knoxville to the Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection to do some research. He was interested in family history and I tore into a microfilm from the summer of 1921, doing some research on the local black team, the Knoxville Giants. We were both successful.

After a few hours of research we left to visit a new old bookstore. Central Street Books was formerly The Book Eddy. They have a nice selection of sports books, but I didn't buy any. I did find a book in the humor section for my dad. the lives and time of archy & mehitabel by Don Marquis.  It wasn't the title that caught my eye, but the dust jacket.  Below is the scan of the front of it.  Was it a German commentary on the Psalms?  Don't really know.  I don't read German.

There was a note that the dust jacket was from 1733.   We asked the clerk at the counter.  He said that they had received a three volume set that had very poor binding.  It wasn't worth it for them to have the books rebound, so they removed the pages and used them for various things around the shop.  This page ended up as a dust jacket.  They were selling the prints from the book individually.

There was a wooden bowl near the register that had some small (approx. 1-1/2" x 2-1/4") advertising cards of some sort.  I picked up three that caught my eye.  Normally I scan cards at 300 dpi and reduce them down to 150 dpi to show on this blog.  It keeps the images big enough not to strain the eyeball, but small enough in size that the page loads efficiently.

150 dpi

I liked these so much that I kept them at 300 dpi.  After getting home and looking at them I did a quick search on the web.

Jefferson Burdick designated them as "J7".  John Hodge designated them as "AH2211".   T.K. Treadwell designated them as "G".   The were issued in in several series, with a cornucopia of variations.  (See what I did there?  Happy Thanksgiving.)  I found most of my information on these cards at Joe Lill's Soda Cards page.

After Dad paid for his books (and my cards) I noticed a stack of loose sheets on the counter.  The clerk described them as pages from a 1716 edition of The Book of Common Prayer.  We looked through the stack and found the corresponding Psalm, 68, verse 24.  He bought that one, too.

The price on all these? $7.50 for the archy & mehitabel.  25 cents each for the bird cards.  A dollar for the Book of Common Prayer page.

We then went to Five Guys Burgers and on to another used bookstore.  I didn't buy any sports books there, either.

The German language dust jacket has that glassine cover over the dust jacket.  I didn't remove it to scan the jacket.  It is presented at 150 dpi.  Click on it for a larger image.  The Book of Common Prayer image is presented at 150 dpi.  Click on it for a larger image.